From a devotion written for Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota
The Seventh Sunday of Easter
“Why do you stand looking upward toward heaven?”
THE FIRST LESSON
Acts 1:[1-5] 6-14
[In the first book, Theophilus, I (Luke) wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This," he said, "is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”]
So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
THE SECOND LESSON
John 17:1-11[12-24]
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.”
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” [While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”]
REFLECTION
By
Norm Wright
+In the Name of the Ascended Christ+
When I was growing up in the small town of Kaylor, S.D. Ascension Day was a holiday: no school, no bank, no bars, not even the two gas stations were open. My dad would close the family-owned grocery store and cafe for the day and, after we all went to church in the morning, we would spend the rest of the day fishing at Pickstown or Lake Andes.
Ascension Day gets little attention nowadays. It seems to have lost its luster and relevance in today's world. Because it isn’t given much serious attention, it has been reduced to a story about Jesus’ exit from the scene after his resurrection. In fact, if one reads about the ascension of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, one might conclude that Jesus ascended into heaven on Easter or no later than a day or two after. There is no distinct timeline given in the Gospels as to when this occurred, and the Gospel of John offers no description of it.
The Acts of the Apostles is the only place where there is a detailed discussion about it as an event worth taking note of. In fact there is a lot to unpack in Luke’s brief but masterful account of it. What we find is that it is anything but an exit story. In fact, the ascension story in Acts brings us back to the resurrection, to consider its meaning in the light of Jesus’ ascension. The ascension underscores that Jesus’ resurrection was not an ending, but rather the start of a new creation that began with the resurrection.
What is intriguing, among many other things, is Luke’s description of Jesus talking to his disciples about the Kingdom of God. We don’t know what was said, but apparently what wasn’t discussed was anything about Jesus re-establishing the Kingdom of Israel; something the disciples and Jesus’ Jewish followers anticipated as an immediate followup to Jesus’ resurrection.
There was a sense that Jesus was leaving before the job, they believed the Messiah was supposed to do, was done, so they ask (and here I am paraphrasing), “Jesus, now that you’re back, aren’t you going to establish the Kingdom of Israel? Isn’t that what being the Messiah is all about? You beat death. How about beating the Romans? Why leave now when nothing about the world we know has changed?”
This is an important question. It’s a question (at least an unconscious one) many Christians continue to have today. It is the reason Luke is addressing it upfront, at the beginning of Acts, because Jesus’ resurrection didn’t result in that happening.
So what is Jesus’ resurrection about?
Here I will offer two personal views that may appear incongruent with general understanding and a number of church teachings.
The first is that Jesus’s resurrection is God’s final judgement on humankind. Exploring that view will require a whole set of homilies - so stay tuned.
The second view is built on the first; that as the final judgment, Jesus’ resurrection serves as the reset point to get us back on the path of taking care of things, which, by the way, is our original job description according to Genesis.
In other words, God’s way of setting things straight begins by setting us straight and putting us on a path established by Jesus - as a trajectory through history - to collectively live into role of caretakers and do the job we were originally intended to do. Unfortunately, some of the Church’s teachings and practices over the past two thousand years have distracted us from that path.
Jesus does not debate the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel simply because it is caught up in the establishment of God’s Kingdom. If for the past forty days Jesus had been talking about God’s Kingdom, why was there a need to ask about the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel?
The simple answer is the disciples were incapable of letting go of an entrenched mindset at that point. In fact, that mindset is traceable throughout the New Testament.
Many Christians continue to insist or at least harbor the idea that Jesus must return or could return as a militant Messiah and that there will be a militant end to the world (a catastrophic Armageddon-moment); an idea that is deeply rooted in Christian fundamentalism and in some evangelical denominations. To be honest, there is a lot of scripture in the New Testament to back that idea, but there is also a lot of scripture that dispels a literal interpretation of its more militant passages.
This idea of a militant return of Jesus begs the question that if Jesus, as the Messiah, didn’t come as a militant messiah the first time around which resulted in God forgiving our bellicose behavior, what makes us think Jesus would come back as a militant messiah a second time around as if to imply the first time around did’t get it right?
Jesus basically tells his disciples and us, “Don’t worry about it. This is God’s issue. What is important for you now is to be my witnesses and continue the work that I started.” At that point, Jesus ascends and lets the question about such things go unanswered.
As the disciples are looking up trying to see Jesus in the obscurity of a cloud, two men in white mysteriously appear and ask, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” In other words, these two mysterious men were pointing the disciples' gaze and ours back to earth in order to keep us grounded in the reset of creation that is taking place in the here and now.
The description of a cloud taking him up; as in, receiving Jesus and being described as the means by which Jesus returns is worth paying attention to because it’s not so much about the cloud being the means by which Jesus goes and comes that is important. Rather, it is the meaning of the cloud that is significant. The cloud that took Jesus up and received Jesus is a familiar symbol used throughout scripture in various ways. It is the cloud mentioned in the Transfiguration. It’s the cloud that led Israel in the wilderness by day during the exodus.
Clouds are used throughout scripture as a metaphor for hidden things. They also are used as a metaphor for dispensing goodness, life, and justice just as clouds dispense life-giving rain. The cloud represents the hiddenness; the ineffability of God. Jesus is absorbed into the paradoxical cloud of that Being in which we live, move, and have our being; that Being which is expressed in our being.
The cloud is also a symbol of the faithful - the cloud of witnesses - us and all who came before and who will come after. That is why Jesus’ ministry continues through us, his witnesses in the here and now. The cloud remains until all are one and all are caught up into its mysterious splendor.
It was and is necessary that Jesus Christ is hidden from our physical sight, because that sight has never been reliable, as we have seen demonstrated throughout our lessons in Gospel of John during Lent and Easter. What reveals the truth of Jesus to us is the sight of faith.
The risen and ascended Christ is experienced as the cosmic nexus between God and humankind, as the path (the way of Jesus) between heaven and earth. Like the rain that falls from clouds, Christ has rained down on all creation and is experienced in all things by the means of God’s grace and expressed through our acts of faith.
The ascension of Jesus reminds us that we are called to live into our roles as the caretakers of life on this planet until we are gathered into that cloud of witnesses and enter into the splendor of that Light in which God is hidden.
O Comforter, draw near, within our hearts appear, and kindle them, your holy flame bestowing. Amen
The Bible texts of the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
The Collects, Psalms and Canticles are from the Book of Common Prayer, 1979.
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